The report “A Common Set of Aligned Sustainable Infrastructure Indicators (SII)” identifies the sixteen common elements used by multilateral development banks to define sustainable infrastructure practices across the quadruple bottom line. The SII provides insights into how stakeholders can incorporate the indicators into their infrastructure projects and monitor sustainability performance throughout the infrastructure lifecycle. Moreover, the SII sets forth how reaching the sustainability indicators can help mobilize public and private investments.

The Attributes and Framework for Sustainable Infrastructure contributes to developing a shared understanding of the key dimensions and attributes that together define sustainable infrastructure, based on the propositions that sustainability of infrastructure must consider the benefits and costs of investment over the entire lifecycle and that sustainability must be assessed across all relevant dimensions (economic / financial, environmental, social and institutional). The paper then sets out the detailed attributes that constitute the elements of each of these four dimensions.

The Adaptation Principles offer a guide to effective climate change adaptation, containing hands-on guidance to the design, implementation and monitoring of national adaptation strategies, showing that each country needs to tailor adaptation actions to its specific needs and priorities. To guide this process, the Adaptation Principles offer concrete and practical tools: Screening questions to identify the most urgent and effective actions, toolboxes illustrating common datasets and methodologies to support decisions, indicators to monitor and evaluate progress, and case studies on how the COVID-19 pandemic influences priorities in taking effective adaptation action.

ThinkHazard! is a web-based tool to analyze the risks of natural hazards (floods, wildfires, earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, water scarcity, extreme heat, tsunamis and cyclones) at national, regional and local level for all countries around the world. The tool provides a simple overview of different hazard levels for any given area and delivers recommendations and guidance for adaptation and safety, including for project design and planning. ThinkHazard! also highlights how each hazard may change in the future as a result of climate change.

The International Good Practice Principles for Sustainable Infrastructure provide globally applicable guidance on the integration of sustainability throughout the entire infrastructure lifecycle, focussing on the “upstream” project level. They help high-level policy- and decision-makers in governments create the enabling environment for sustainable infrastructure that is needed to achieve the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement. The ten principles emphasize the importance of infrastructure approaches that respond to service needs and demands, address sustainability the earliest possible in the planning process, integrate all aspects of sustainability as well as relevant governance frameworks and different infrastructure systems and sectors across time and space.

The report „Benchmarking Infrastructure Development 2020“ assesses the regulatory quality of large infrastructure projects through both Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and Traditional Public Investments (TPIs) in 140 and 40 economies respectively. The corresponding online platform highlights the key findings resulting from the data, organized around the infrastructure project cycle phases (regulatory & institutional framework, preparation, procurement, contract management, management of unsolicited proposals, infrastructure asset management). By providing actionable indicators, the tool supports evidence-based regulatory reforms to improve the enabling environment for developing quality infrastructure projects.

The African Development Bank’s Environmental and Social Assessment Procedures (ESAP) support the integration of environmental, climate change and social considerations in projects and programs of the Bank and its borrowers. The ESAP describe the assessment procedure for different project types and across the full lifecycle from country programming to post completion. Thereby, the ESAP support decision-making and improvement of project results, ensuring that Bank-financed operations conform to the requirements laid out in the operational safeguards (OS) and are thus sustainable.

The EU Taxonomy sets out the overarching conditions that an economic activity has to meet to qualify as sustainable. In order to ensure that investments and financial market activities support those sustainable economic activities, financial market participants active in the EU and companies subject to non-financial disclosure requirements must now incorporate disclosures with reference to the Taxonomy. This way, the Taxonomy aims to help channel capital flows toward sustainable investments in a harmonized and consistent manner across the EU single market, thereby supporting the EU Green Deal and the Paris Agreement, and guide the transition of companies toward sustainable economic activities.

LEED for Buildings offers four different rating systems that support building sustainability throughout the life cycle: LEED for Building Design and Construction (LEED BD+C) that can be used for new buildings, LEED for Interior Design and Construction (LEED ID+C) for interior spaces, LEED for Operations, Maintenance (LEED O+M) for existing buildings and LEED Homes for residential buildings of up to six stories. The tools help decision makers and stakeholders to create responsible and sustainable buildings and continuously improve buildings’ performance. Recertification options are available.

The Hydropower Sustainability Guidelines on Good International Industry Practice (HGIIP) point out how sustainability performance for the hydropower sector should be defined and measured across a range of environmental, social, technical and governance topics. The guidelines present definitions of the processes and outcomes relating to good practice in the planning, operation and implementation of hydropower projects. As a compendium, the guidelines are a reference document for meeting the expectations of lenders, regulators, and consumers. The guidelines are complementary with the Hydropower Sustainability Assessment Tool.